Diogenes - 'On Parade'

Rome was the scene of another gay pride parade on Saturday. It was over-reported, as usual, the sympathies of journalists and editors having overmastered their professional objectivity. As usual, hatred and ridicule of the Church was a chief theme of the festivities, which the media treated with amused indulgence.

By what may seem historical accident, as other defenders of Judeo-Christian morality fade into the inert secular background, the Catholic Church assumes a more prominent combatant role in the culture wars. There is no new belligerence on the Church's part; simply by standing pat and holding on to those moral truths she once shared with Protestants and Jews (and indeed many pagans), her position as a nay-sayer becomes progressively more isolated -- and as it becomes more isolated it becomes more obnoxious to the innovators. These innovators would have us believe they've been singled out for ill-treatment by the Church; in fact they're projecting their own antagonism onto the figure that persists in standing in their way.

To be gay, inter alia, is to be anti-Catholic, just as to be pro-abortion is to be anti-Catholic. The conflict is a matter of first principles, and no amount of lawyering can effect a reconciliation. True, there are gays and pro-aborts who also claim to be Catholic, but the gentlest questioning reveals they're using "Catholic" in some distorted private sense. The non-stop shriek of rage that serves as the obbligato for the "pride" and "choice" parades is a more candid expression of conviction (we're talking about declarations, not appetites) than those furry op-eds pretending to seek a co-existence treaty between Catholic teaching and its negation.

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